JPMorgan Chase blocks outside AI agents like Muse, Instinct from directly accessing accounts

JPMorgan Chase won't allow outside artificial intelligence agents to access customer accounts and operate on their behalf, CEO Jamie Dimon said Tuesday, citing risks to the company and its customers as tech firms including Meta release autonomous assistants.

"We're not going to allow just any … outside agent to come in inside the company, because it's just too risky for clients and for JPMorgan," Dimon told analysts on the bank's third-quarter earnings call.

"You don't want rogue agents, and it could be thousands of them," he added, describing the potential threat to customers. In July, an OpenAI model hacked into AI company Hugging Face's servers.

The stance from Dimon, the longtime CEO of the biggest U.S. bank by assets and a de facto spokesman for the U.S. financial sector, is reminiscent of an earlier fight with fintech firms over access to customer data. JPMorgan moved to charge data middlemen including Plaid for access, a dispute that similarly pitted the bank's security concerns against tech firms' demands for access.

A JPMorgan spokeswoman confirmed to CNBC that the bank currently blocks external AI agents from operating on behalf of retail customers.

"Protecting our customers is our top priority. Because it is not safe, we do not permit third parties to access accounts by obtaining customers' banking credentials and logging in on their behalf," the spokeswoman said.

"We support secure, customer-authorized data sharing through open banking providers and are committed to enabling agentic connections securely," she added.

That means that AI agents can access some customer data from Chase accounts in a read-only fashion, such as customer balances, if Plaid or another connector has the user's credentials. But they can't send money or pay a bill — actions that make an agent useful.

There's no timeline for when the bank would have safeguards in place to allow agents to directly interact with customer accounts, the spokeswoman added.

Dimon said JPMorgan is using AI agents internally and plans to deploy them for customer-facing applications. The bank's approach, he said, isn't about being for or against the technology, but about ensuring it serves customers safely.

In recent weeks, JPMorgan began a targeted pilot for its own AI tool called Smart Cash, which aims to predict a user's cash flow and move funds to maximize yield, Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Barnum said Tuesday. That would appear to be a defensive move against external agents.

Dimon also seemed to draw a line about liability when customers authorize outside AI agents to act on their behalf.

"If people are using them, they should understand the risk," Dimon said. "They should understand there's a liability transfer."

Personal agents have gained mainstream popularity in recent months as AI models integrate more autonomy, like the ability to cancel subscriptions or use credit cards on a user's behalf, for example.

Instinct, a digital concierge that relies primarily on text messaging instead of an app, launched earlier this year on an invitation-only basis. The startup behind the service, San Francisco-based Spear Street Technology, was founded last year and reached a $10 billion valuation last month.

In September, bank stocks were hit as Meta's Muse agent topped the app download charts shortly after it was unveiled, sparking fears that consumers would use agents to move funds from low-yielding accounts to higher-yielding ones. Weeks later, OpenAI released its own agent, Dots.

Apollo Chief Economist Torsten Slok and others pointed to the risks that agents pose to cheap bank deposits. But that risk will be limited if agents aren't allowed to operate freely with customers' accounts.